NSF Feels Heat On Delayed Centers

WASHINGTON—The National Science Foundation’s science and technology centers program, intended to be a beacon for collaborative U.S. research that would speed applications to the marketplace, instead has become a lightning rod for criticism from the scientific community. NSF’s decision not to fund any such centers this fiscal year provoked keen disappointment among scientists, especially those who had raced to meet the January 15 deadline. A number of applicants echoed the complaint of Robert Byer, research dean at Stanford Univer sity, that the process resulted in "a tremendous waste of scientific resources in this country.” While many scientists criticized NSF’s procedure for soliciting applications, some also suggested ways for NSF to recoup part of the applicants’ collective investment. These range from an accelerated review and early ranking of the applications now awaiting fiscal 1989 funding, to making public (with the applicants’ permission) the major features of specific applications. The foundation received 325 applications for a total of $4 billion, said program director Alan Leshner, after receiving 570 letters of intent from institutions. NSF is now seeking $150 million for fiscal 1989 to support about 15 centers for four or five years. The proposals have been divided into about a dozen groups of related research interests and distributed to peer review panels for ranking. Leshner expects that site visits will be made this summer and final decisions announced this fall, after Congress has approved the 1989 budget. Many applicants have complained that they devoted substantial resources to preparing detailed applications on a tight schedule, only to see their proposals competing with hundreds of others. Several suggested that the total cost to participants of preparing the applications exceeded the $30 million pot for which they were competing in fiscal 1988—a calculation NSF refutes. And Byer said NSF acted “irresponsibly” by launching a program without funding in hand. Microbiologist C. Fred Fox, part of a UCLA group that has applied for S&T center funding to study sulfur-respiring bacteria, noted “real deficits in procedure” by NSF in soliciting applications. After receiving letters of intent, he suggested, NSF could have convened a panel to sort through the embryonic proposals and suggest that some groups collaborate to develop the best possible applications. The result, he said, might have been a smaller number of final applications that made maximum use of limited scientific resources. Even now, Fox suggested, NSF should make public the applications of consenting teams. Such disclosure would give investigators a chance to learn what their colleagues have proposed, and perhaps develop complementary research. Leshner did not dismiss the idea totally. “It’s not out of the question that we would announce the top-rated non-funded proposals” after obtaining the necessary agreement, he said. “We certainly don’t want to waste the tremendous talent that’s been spent in producing these proposals,” he added. “The foundation will do whatever it can to make the best use of that effort.’ Free Publicity Martin Schultz, chairman of Yale’s computer science department helped assemble an S&T center proposal on parallel computer processing. He said he’d be interested in having that application made public—not for the benefit of academic colleagues, who he says already share information, but as a way of attracting outside funding. Indeed, many applicants urge NSF to select proposals most likely to be funded so that the rest can seek money here. Others contend that there are few if any alternate sources of financing for such projects. “I don’t see any very viable alternatives, particularly in times of such difficult funding,” said William Spicer, an engineer- ing professor at the Stanford Electronics Lab, whose proposal involves developing uses of the free-electron laser. NSF officials hope that the collaboration necessary to submit a proposal will be sustained regardless of its fate. But others say that view is naive. “The glue is the money,” said Tom Mason, a ceramicist at Northwestern University’s Materials Research Center. “If there’s no money, it will all fall apart.” Mason is seeking funding for a joint effort on superconductivity with the University of Illinois and Argonne National Lab. Mason and other researchers are also concerned that their proposals will be stale by the time the centers are funded. “You really can’t expect to [hold up] 12 months from now,’ Mason said. Working in a field where research advances rapidly, he said, his only hope is that NSF will ask those who submitted the top 10 proposals in superconductivity to update their applications before the final selection. NSF officials insist the delay is only a few months; instead of releasing fiscal 1988 money in late summer, they now intend to disburse fiscal 1989 funds in the fall. The catch, of course, is that Congress must first appropriate the money. While some investigators said they knew they faced long odds in getting funded, several suggested that NSF should have winnowed the field before seeking final applications. Mason believes that NSF could have screened out some proposals on the basis of a two- or three-page preliminary application before inviting the remaining groups to develop final proposals. To NSF’s Leshner, this three-stage process would be “all well and good if you’re one of the people who get to go in” to the final round. But many applicants would consider it unfair to be eliminated from a potential five-year, $15 million allocation on the basis of a sketchy pre-proposal, he said. For similar reasons, he noted, NSF did not consider restricting the number of applications any state or institution could submit. Applications came from 124 institutions, and some schools reportedly submitted up to a dozen proposals. But the long odds, coupled with the delay in any funding decision, create “a cynicism that’s deadly,” noted Stanford’s Byer, as well as “some lasting damage to university-industry relationships” as potential collaborators grow more skeptical about funding prospects. That point was echoed by Jared Cohon, vice provost for research at Johns Hopkins University. “The thing that worries me,” he said, “is that, if this first round of S&T proposals comes up entirely empty, what credibility do I have in trying to get faculty to work together [on future proposals]? If none are funded, NSF will have done people like me a great disservice.” Stanford chemistry professor Richard Zare, who chaired a National Academy of Sciences’ panel that advised NSF on its S&T centers program, said the high quality of the applications shows that the science community endorses the concept. NSF followed the panel’s suggestion that it give the country’s scientists free rein in designing proposals rather than selecting topics or disciplines it would support. “It turned on all kinds of creative juices in the system,” Zare noted. “A lot of the nation’s best scientific energy has gone into these proposals. “What’s not good is that there’s no money,” he continued. “We’re heading down the railroad track and the bridge may be out.” His fear is that Congress may not fund the program next year, either. “That,” he said, “would be a catastrophe.” Greene is on the staff of THE SCIENTIST.

NSF Feels Heat On Delayed Centers

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